


Thank You, Desmond

by ajackdaw



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen, POV Third Person, Post-Game, canon character death, outsider pov, post-ACIII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2518043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajackdaw/pseuds/ajackdaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the Solar Maxum, thousands of granite plaques appear in numerous cities around the world, all bearing the same statement: “Thank you, Desmond”. The rest of the world is baffled on who this is and why they should be thanked, but the Brotherhood will not let his sacrifice go unrecognized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank You, Desmond

It begins on a Monday in Turin, New York.

Six days after the Solar Maxum, a small granite plaque appears on the side of the downtown post office. Black in color with white letters carved into its surface and affixed to the brick wall, it reads, simply, “Thank you, Desmond”.

It causes a local stir within the town, the few hundred residents speculating on its purpose and just who put it up seemingly overnight without anyone noticing. The town sheriff is called and he and his deputy pry it from the wall, the few locals present gossiping all the while. It is taken to the police station and shelved for later investigation, the matter seemingly over with but the next morning a new plaque has taken its place.

Identical to the first, the plaque carries the same three words and as with the first, not one of Turin’s residents know who affixed it to the building nor who—or what—it refers to. The pattern repeats again that day, the bemused sheriff hauling the piece of stone away but again it reappears the next morning but it is not the only one.

Unknown to the small, upstate town in New York, an identical plaque appears 280 miles south in downtown Manhattan on the base of a fountain’s ledge. It is located in one of the numerous parks of the city, lost in the middle of a sea of skyscrapers filled with offices and secrets. It causes a stir among the local police force which grumbles about vandals and pranks before removing it with considerable force.

But it is in vain. The marker appears overnight at the same time five more appear in the West Coast.

Over the next week, hundreds of identical plaques appear throughout the United States attached to everything from the brick walls of stores to the bases of monuments, from smallest towns in South Dakota to the bustling cosmopolitans in the east. The first international plaque appears on the wall of the Auditore Villa in Monteriggioni, Italy and is closely followed by one in Rome that causes quite a stir when it appears on the outer wall of the Coliseum.

Police and law keeping officials throughout the world attempt numerous times to catch those responsible, but no security footage reveals the culprit and stakeouts end with stories of white phantoms and waking up none-the-wiser the next morning without a clue as to how they fell asleep in the first place.

The plaques quickly became a source of fascination for the world’s public, spawning numerous urban legends and debates on the purpose of the markers.

They are thought to be many things: a simple prank, a publicity stunt, the workings of a gang or a new religious cult, even an international art statement. The simple phrase is pulled apart and analyzed from every possible angle by scholars, students and everyone in-between and each has their own theory on the plaques’ purpose.

“Desmond” becomes a source of fascination as people try to discover just who, or what, it means. The name is whispered and shouted and waved off, but it is on everyone’s tongue. As expected, numerous individuals come forth claiming to be “Desmond” but all are discredited within days of appearing.

More mysterious, however, is the first portion of the short message: a simple expression of gratitude that is lost to the majority of humanity but that seems to hold a world of meaning.

Weeks pass and no answer comes forth. “Desmond” remains a mystery and the plaques remain, constantly reappearing whenever they are taken down with just as much fanfare as when they first appeared.

They remain as a constant reminder, one seemingly aimed at the entire world.

***

It is a month after the first stone appeared and Marie Henderson is wet, miserable, and minutes away from giving up on the evening bus and just walking home, weather be damned. Her shift had run late and the city bus had long since switched over to its late night schedule, running only once every hour (if you was lucky) through the darkening streets.

Huddled under the glass bus stop, she watches the few people braving the near flooded-streets of Montreal during its latest rainstorm. The streets funnel an unending supply of rain into the gutters in large gapping puddles and the wind joins in to create truly miserable conditions for those unlucky enough to be caught outside. As it is, Marie has not seen more than ten people since she began waiting underneath the stand more than an hour ago.

A flash of red and white catches her eye, the color bright against the concrete and metal of downtown Montreal. Looking over she sees a woman walking by in an oversized hockey jersey, the bright red material weighed down from the pouring rain but no less vibrant in color. Large headphones cover her ears, the white plastic material nestled in amongst black strands of hair plastered against her face and not moving even as she bobs her head to her music. But her eyes are open, aware and darting around with an alertness that is at odds with her casual posture.

Walking alongside her is a taller male, his pale skin bleached even whiter by the cold weather and offset by his dark red hair. Like his companion, he wears a red shirt—a button-up in a shade of burgundy dyed several shades darker by the water—covered by a long black overcoat. He holds a cup of coffee casually in one hand and a large briefcase in the other.

She notices that he holds it close to his side, the case held still even as he moves forward and pulled closer whenever another pedestrian wanders too close.

A frown pulls at the corners of her mouth, the two’s behavior striking her as odd though she cannot say why. A faint prickling sensation runs down her spine, an unknown tension running through her as they move closer to her position in the small glass bus stop.

She huddles closer to the side of the structure, her side pressing close to the frigid glass of the wall as she watches.

The man and woman keep their slow pace despite the rain bearing down on them, moving unhurriedly down the sidewalk and pausing only briefly to cross the empty street.

A little of the tension bleeds out of Marie’s limbs as the space between them increases and she allows herself to move away from the side of the stand.

The pair enters the park, disappearing behind the concrete wall when they suddenly take a sharp left. Marie feels a desire to follow after the pair, curious despite the warnings some instinctual part of her throws up in reaction to the pair. She has never been very good at curbing her curiosity and impulses, a fact her mother chastises her about near daily.

A quick glance down the road confirms that no bus is coming and she darts across the street before she can think better of it.

Feeling like a child playing at being a spy, she sticks close to the concrete wall encasing the park to seek out the pair. She spots the woman’s bright jersey several yards into the park and is struck by the sight of her walking on her own. The strange woman had maintained her sedate pace as she walks through the meandering paths of the park but the man is no longer with her.

Marie’s own brow furrows in confusion and she edges nervously into the park, on edge despite not knowing why. A soft clinking sound, like metal on stone, draws her attention. After casting one last glance to the woman, Marie follows the noise to the small theatre erected in the middle of the park.

The outdoor amphitheater is situated at the bottom of a small rise; several rows of stone seats cut into the lawn leading down to the half-dome of the stage, the yellow-tinged concrete of the structure’s overhang dulled by the dreary weather. The small flat space beneath is covered in standing water, the stage not even safe from the downpour due to the wind’s intervention.

Despite all of this, the man crouches at the base of the stage headless of the water pooling around the raised platform. From her position at the top of the rise, Marie cannot tell what exactly the man is doing to the stone. If the sounds are anything to go by, she thinks that he is chipping away at the base though why she cannot say.

Faintly, she hears the man talking to himself and is struck by his accent or what little of it she can hear. Though the man speaks in an undertone, his words carry through the empty amphitheater with only the slightest distortion from the pouring rain: “Always a dramatist, eh, Des?” The soft cadence to his tone and drawn out vowels gave him away as a foreigner— _British_ , Marie thinks.

Just as she is about to slowly edge closer, the man abruptly stands up; the sounds of stonework cut off and are replaced by the muffled sound of rain beating down.

Marie holds her breath, an inexplicable feeling of ‘wrong’ thundering through her in the face of the man’s unnatural stillness. The two of them remain frozen in place though for two very different reasons. Slowly, so slowly Marie thinks she’s imagining it, the man turns his face to catch a glimpse of her over his shoulder.

The move is subtle and hardly even shows a full profile of the man but Marie is held in place by fear from the small portion she can see.

A single dark eye regards her coldly and she finds that she cannot move as each limb locks into place as a feeling akin to ice slides over and through her. She feels like a rabbit unknowingly hunted by a wolf thought to be a man, stumbling on a predator and minutes away from an uncertain fate.

After what feels like a lifetime, the man turns away from her and, after pausing briefly to gather his briefcase, moves off into the tree line just behind the amphitheater. Marie tracks his movements and with a jolt of terror, sees the woman leaning casually against a tree a few yards into the trees before the thicket became too dense to see through.

The woman’s gaze pierces through her even from this distance and Marie sincerely wonders if she is about to die. The stranger’s eyes are fierce enough: they are the eyes of a hawk circling its prey, the certainty of death in the near future and it would not be its own.

The man walks past the woman without pause and after pinning Marie in place a moment longer with cold eyes ( _Yes_ , Marie thinks, _this must be what death looks like_ ), the woman too continues on into the forest and out of sight.

Her heart thunders in her chest, the terror easing with each second that takes them far away from her. The trembling in her legs eases and her ( _damnable_ ) curiosity tugs at the corner of her mind again.

“Jesus, haven’t you caused enough trouble?” she mutters to herself, the words fumbling out from her lips. Despite her words, she takes a short step forward, descending onto the next level of seats. Her eyes shoot to the tree line, half expecting the pair to reappear as soon as she moves but she sees neither the man nor the woman among the trees.

Emboldened by their lack of presence, she continues down, gaining speed as she nears the stage until she’s all but stumbling over the slick grass and concrete.

With a final glance to the trees, Marie kneels down in front the stage where the man had been only minutes before and looks at what he had been working on.

A short rectangle of black granite free from blemish is fixed neatly onto the concrete by a set of screws in each corner; a series of letters is carved into the stone and painted a stark white, the words glaring up at her.

She reaches a hand out to trace the letters—hesitating only slightly before her finger makes contact—and finds that she knows the words printed there: she has seen them in newspaper articles and on websites, but never in person; has heard them spoken in reverence and derision and confusion, but never with the same level of emotion that the man’s ‘Des’ carried ( _he sounded so_ _miserable_ , she thinks, _and so very lost_ ).

Marie glances towards the pair’s last location before reading aloud: “Thank you, Desmond.”

The words hold a weight they didn’t have before, a physical presence incessantly bearing down on her shoulders long after they are spoken. The feeling keeps her rooted in place, her finger tracing circles around the letters in the same way they now circle through her own mind.

She wonders at them and, for the first time, at those who would want them known.

**Author's Note:**

> Still not over Desmond 2k14.  
> This idea was bouncing around my head for a while and Desmond deserves the love. 
> 
> I'm supposed to be working on my multi-chapter AC fic but i can't help myself, sorry.


End file.
